There are many ways to acquire a muse, and just as many ways to lose one. I’ve gone long stretches of time without a muse, and it does impact my desire to write.

Muses don’t have to be external to one’s self, they can be a self driven motivation from deep within I suppose, but in my case, the muse is external to me. Whether it be a person, place or thing, my muse is not a part of my consciousness, or subconscious, for that matter.

I’ve been reading about famous writers and artists and how they’ve found their muses. In many of the cases, their muses are a person they know, and more often than not, a person they have a relationship with. But I’m going to go out on a limb here: a muse is only inspiring to me when the person, place, or thing is not part of my everyday life, or anyone that I have had a relationship with. Diving deeper, I realized I employ limerence to allow my muses entry into my thoughts.

Limerence is a hot topic on self-help social media due to it being regarded as a negative aspect of what the brain can do to deal with past trauma – and I am not claiming that it isn’t; as a sufferer of childhood trauma myself, I understand coping mechanisms and I am not here to belittle or in any way discount trauma, and how people cope with it. However, I know the difference between using limerence to gain creative inspiration versus limerence to replicate feelings of love. Limerence is not love, and love is not ever going to be limerence, and there’s no two ways about it.

But utilizing limerence to find and keep a muse? You’d be surprised how many creative ideas start to form. In fact, I believe if you get too close to your muse, you’ll actually lose the creative force that limerence offers. It is an idealized way of seeing someone and romanticizing that person (if your muse is a person, that is) in your life. The less I interact with the person, the better for my creative process.

I like to keep my muses as long as possible, because there are stretches of time where the Land of the Muses is a parched desert with tumbleweeds blowing all around and nothing but mirages for miles. Some interaction with the muse is helpful, otherwise, what can one use as inspiration? But too much of a good thing is not always a good thing. The more you get to know a muse personified, the more the gold shiny coat wears off and underneath it really is only nickel and it starts itching your ears and your neck and you’re allergic to it and you’ve got to throw it away.

I just recently realized that I use limerence to obtain my muses and it surprised my brain, which is confounding, because Brain is in charge of that stuff. Brain should be better organized, but Brain also uses sticky notes for everything, so…I get it. That said, even my tree, William, is a muse. He’s quiet, we don’t talk a lot, and he inspires me.

What works for you? How do you obtain a muse? Is your muse internal or external? How do you keep a muse and how do you lose a muse? Have you ever thought about limerence as it relates to letting a muse twirl around and be lazy and fabulous in your brain? Are your muses people, places, or things? How and when do they strike? It’s all so very a-musing, don’t you think?

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